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netbuzz writes "Anxious to lift a ban on comments brought about by incessant trolling and anonymous slander, a Massachusetts newspaper has begun requiring two things of online readers who want to leave their thoughts on stories: a one-time fee of 99 cents and a willingness to use their real names. Says the publisher: 'This is a necessary step, in my opinion, if The Attleboro (MA) Sun Chronicle is going to continue to provide a forum for comments on our websites.'"

It's a one-time registration... Plus, someone willing to spend hours and hours scouring online news sites and comment forums to leave little gems of "hah they got what they deserved" or "it's [insert x politicians name] fault" would probably be willing to part with a few dollars here and there to get their fix, for god's sake if every person who posted "the economy is in the shitter and it's so-and-so's fault" would just *get a job* we probably wouldn't have a recession any more to complain about. On secon

If they are willing to pay to troll, then they are welcome on my blog. I'd kick them off, and then they can pay to spew again. It's easy money, and if it is consistent, then it would be better than ad revenue.

This isn't a debate on the economy, but put simply the problem is too few people *willing to contribute* because they have a salary expectation that cannot be met by currently available jobs. If underemployment benefits were stronger than unemployment benefits (meaning you could earn more by taking a low wage job and collecting benefits than by taking no job and collecting benefits) our overall productivity might start to recover. As it is the only thing keeping 10%+ of the country "contributing" is that

The thing is, a lot of people's salary expectations are to have a salary. I really don't think there's a lot of people turning down a $40,000/year job because they're holding out for the $60,000/year job.

Or... we have too few employees willing to hire, because they have a (low) salary expectation that cannot be met by the available candidates to do their job.

Now hiring C# Developers, minimum 5 years of experience in C# development and project management, with deep understanding of C# sockets, multi-threaded programming, remoting, COM object interoperability, Firefox and Internet Explorer extension development, must have college degree, MCSD certification, and MCSE certification.
$8/hour.
Paid vacation and increase in pay available after 3 years of employment.

As it currently stands, If I am making X on unemployment, then get a part time job that pays Y, my unemployment checks will be X-Y. After a couple months, EDD will see that I am employed, and adjust my benefits so that not only do I no longer get paid X-Y, but if I lose that job, the benefits are based off the lower salary and vastly lower. It's kind of sad because there are plenty of people would be happy to take lower paying jobs to help their unemployment last longer, but if they do so, they're shootin

I was really confused for a second until I realized you were calling the newspapers assholes instead of the assholes that they are trying to prevent cluttering up their comment boards.

I hate reading comments in most papers (and slashdot) where anonymous trolls spew the worst rhetoric just to get a rise out of people. (BTW, good job here, it worked on me) If your bitching about a one-time.99 cent fee, then you need to get off the internet because of the electricity cost.

The Supreme Court has clearly stated that spending money is equivalent to free speech, and since equality is commutative that must mean that free speech is equivalent to spending money. It's really quite logical.

People often times end up being modded -1 I disagree. Some of the most insightful comments around here end up categorized as funny, flamebait or troll. Mostly because a lot of the people with mod points are mindless morons that seem more interested in suppressing speech than encouraging it. Not sure whether I'll get modded Troll, Flamebait, Insightful or Interesting, the suspense is almost palpable.

I've noticed this especially when it comes to discussion of politically charged topics. This site is a really awesome forum for technical discussions and disagreements. As soon as we get started on healthcare or foreign wars, the inappropriate Mods come out in force.

Slashdot's moderation system is basically a meritocracy, or if you prefer to think of it this way, a syncophantocracy. Anyone who says a lot of things that the existing mods want to hear gets karma points and is then allowed to mod, eventually. If your viewpoints don't line up with the herd and you can't express them with a certain level of politeness, you're screwed.

But, overall, the system only sucks in that it's only marginally better than anything else out there. It's imperfect, but it relies on collective intelligence or ignorance as opposed to being the viewpoint of a small band of people. Still highly imperfect, but less imperfect than any other system I've heard of.

Sure, there are abusive mods, and there are bad moderations, but the bad moderations tend to be fixed over time, and the bad moderators tend to fail metamoderation and remove themselves from the moderation gene pool.

It still means that if you post an anti-(insert viewpoint here) and get a bunch of pro-(insert viewpoint here) moderators on your case, your post will be machine-gunned into oblivion soon. But, by and large, so will their moderator points.

Getting downmodded (or upmodded) due to disagreement with the groupthink is typical when your comment is itself purely emotional, or, if factual, does not provide any proof for that. Basically, if you say "Linux sucks", you will be downmodded, and a large number of those downmods will be the "disagree" mods, but is it really a big issue?

But if your claims are factual, the overall tone of the post polite, and you back your points with references, you are much more likely to be upmodded even when advocating opinions that are unpopular here.

The real problem with the moderation system isn't with unreasonable downmods, IMO. It's with unreasonable "+1000" upmods. For example, in any RIAA story, you can post something along the lines of "RIAA can go suck my dick!" in response to some post detailing the abuses, and get heaps of Insightful mods. More generally, for any topic on which/. has a strong group opinion (Linux & OSS, SCO, MS, religion & creationism etc), purely emotional or unsubstantiated FUDish posts that go along with that opinion are upmodded just as fast as those that go against that opinion are downmodded.

I suspect the reason for this is the existence of "Insightful" mod, because it is really bordering on "+1 agree" by definition, and many people seem to use it pretty much that way.

But what about posts that are obviously factually incorrect? Why shouldn't there be a mod for that? I guess "overrated" would be appropriate, but doesn't really explain why it has been modded down. And often, it's not worth the time trying to talk sense into people who have things completely wrong. That will just spawn an unnecessarily long sub-thread.

If you disagree, don't mod, post instead.

So, why doesn't this apply to the other mod categories? If you find a post insightful, don't mod, post instead.

Not just it's huge popularity - but it's moderator pool drawn from it's huge registered userbase. Larger, I suspect, than any but the largest of national daily newspapers - think the LA Times, NY Times, the Washington Post...

But that doesn't prevent trolling, it just moderates them below the average users viewing threshhold. (Browse at -1 sometimes, it's eye opening.)

Slashdot doesn't filter them out very effectively, it's forever plagued by them. What it does have is ways for knowledgeable users (it's entire userbase) to reduce the noise and bring out the signal, all the while knowing full well what trolls are and how to ignore them. A local newspaper has a much smaller and much less savvy audience and needs to actually filter it out somehow, which can be exceedingly difficult if even possible at all.

It's not filtering of different opinions, it's filtering of the trolls who post off-topic graffiti and goatse links rather than actually taking part in the discussion. OP was spot on. Slashdot's moderation system works because it has a huge army of visitors that can be tapped for mod duties. Most newspaper websites have nowhere near enough visitors to do this. Just look at the number of posts on a typical slashdot post and compare it to the most popular articles on a local newspaper: slashdot probably wins by an order of magnitude.

Slashdot's moderation system works because it has a huge army of visitors that can be tapped for mod duties. Most newspaper websites have nowhere near enough visitors to do this

This is a fair observation, but only to a point.

When I read Slashdot, I do so with the mod filters off as I want access to everything. But I also know how to use my mouse wheel. I really don't understand why people are so bothered by graffiti. Well, no, let me rephrase that: I DO understand. I just don't respect it.

In any case, I think Slashcode or something similar would vastly improve the community interaction on any newspaper site. That's the solution; not trying to hide from people you find offensive. The moderation system here is only interesting to me in terms of gauging popular opinion; I don't use it to hide from the big, bad world of crazy people and offensive ideas. I'm not a coward.

And that should make people feel good! -Even if your comment is blasted down to -1, I'll still give it a look because I know that this sometimes means you had an excellent point which people found upsetting because they carry too much psychological baggage. I want to hear that point! If you're trying to waste my time, then all you'll get is a few microseconds before I'm gone.

Newspapers trying to protect readers from reality are acting in a very hypercritical manner. They're supposed to inform people, not shelter them and only feed them prescribed ideas.

And guess what? Trolls are part of the world. Best to give people the ability to leapfrog them and get on with life rather than pretend they aren't there.

What system would that be, homeslice? The moderation only works on posts that are of the generic-troll or meme-troll variety -- like "HOT GRITS" or "OBAMA is a N1&&3r" or somesuch. When trolls troll from a point of view, then it becomes much more subjective. Meta-moderation is very much a crapshoot and not evenly applied.

Obviously slashdot has its own cultural norms and when you come here you simply have to be aware that there's going to be some verbal abuse. A newspaper, on the other hand, doesn't really want that and doesn't want to dedicate its services and infrastructure to hosting shouting matches. The draw for a newspaper is the story, not the argument itself; this is where a newspaper and a forum are different. Any conversation on the article should facilitate understanding, perspectives, and critique of the article, and not be a sort of vanity contest.

A newspaper, on the other hand, doesn't really want that and doesn't want to dedicate its services and infrastructure to hosting shouting matches.

uh...have you seen any of the opinion pages of the major papers? but, all kidding aside you're right. but at the same time so many of these outlets (especially smaller ones) have simple flat comments. even a moderately advanced system (with threads and some kind of reputation based promotion) would help solve a very large portion of the comment problems.

Of course, "troll" is in the eye of the beholder. Slashdot's system enforces a monoculture of thought as restrictive as any I have seen on the internet. Now maybe that what people want and it's moderately democratic in the way it is done, but to claim it's a bastion of free speech and acceptance of varying opinions and perspective is a huge misrepresentation.

You're either an idiot, or this is your first visit to the interwebs. Slashdot's moderation system is one of the best on the web. The fact that I'll be modded down for flamebait and invisible in a few short minutes is proof of that.

you aren't dealing with sophisticated tor and proxy users and ip spoofing, you're dealing with the local technically barely literate cranks. so just enforce ip bans. or even cookies. these guys are sitting at home on one computer, not even in a coffee shop. and you're probably only dealing with 12-24 committed griefers only, so its not an endless problem

finally, i was always a fan of the rubber room (there may be a better term for this technique):

once you've flagged the committed griefer, make it so his comments only appear to him. oftentimes these hacks will comment freely and continually for months on end, completely oblivious to the fact that no one is reading their comments except themselves

(I'm the Systems Manager for a local newspaper, and also had to deal with administration of local forums) Even in my smallish town, the trolls are quite able to get around IP bans and more (many are still on dialup, but we have had some utilize proxy services, or SOCKS proxies - I knew I shouldn't have written that guide a few years back:P). Beyond that, we also get trolls who aren't even living in the area anymore.

As far as the rubber room, while it's a good idea, many papers don't have staff capable of developing systems like that, and are using CMSes not developed in-house. Hell, many small papers don't even HAVE a "web guy/gal" to manage the site. Still, it is feasible that it would function well once implemented.

all that time generating content, looking for feedback, and getting back nothing: its debilitating. then they find out they've been tricked. a second negative dose: even more discouragement

the point is to discourage the troll, stop them in their tracks, get them to think before posting. the rubber room is a huge dose of poison for their behavior. of course they will find out what happened, but you've given them a big amount of grief, to make them think about their behavior

I am under no obligation to post anything you write on my site. none whatsoever.

Wrong. You are if you say or imply you will. Promise to in other words.

By providing a means of posting without warning that the post may deliberately going into a black hole, in fact taking measures to hide that fact from them, you are engaged in fraud. If you explicitly warn a "crank" up front that you've decided to no longer accept their posts then no problem. Just because it's easier for you to e

My local newspaper site, madison.com [madison.com], is pretty new to comments. They disable them on crime stories I've noticed but anything doing with politics, the proposed high-speed rail service between Madison and Milwaukee, or state workers will attract trolls by the dozen. It makes reading the news stories like taking a walk through Craigslist's Rants and Raves section. When it turns to/b/ I'll just quit reading I suppose.

The concept of paying to comment seems a little too far though. That said, I'm all for havin

I have to ask this. The stories about hi-speed rail. Are the trolls you are speaking of really trolls or people that you disagree with?An example of a troll is someone that says this is another of Obama's communist plans.Some one saying that it will be a waste of money is an honest disagreement.

Naturally, the newspaper in question has a right to do this, and especially if they are a small paper they may feel they don't have the resources available to consistently moderate user comments. Traditionally, newspapers confirmed the identity of people who wrote letters to the editor - which also is helpful in eliminating spoofing.

However, there is certainly a downside. Sometimes, the things that most need to be said require anonymity. When the prevailing dogma - whether secular or religious - precludes the truth, those who wish to speak the truth must take steps to protect themselves. Slashdot has found a pretty good way of reducing the impact of trolls while both preserving anonymity and allowing the use of pseudonyms that allow regular posters to develop a good reputation without revealing their true identity.

I hope and expect that most online media will follow Slashdot's example, rather than the example of the Sun Chronicle.

If you want to use the newspaper's soapbox, you have to play by their rules.

If you want to post anonymously and for free (although this is a one-time ninety-nine cent fee, so it doesn't exactly break the bank) then there are lots of venues in which to do so.

Different parts of the internet offer different ways to screen out trolls, with varying degrees of success and with varying costs and benefits. Some newspapers impose lengthy delays (and incur significant costs to themselves) on comment posting to allow for their own moderators to screen comments. Slashdot has a moderation system which is generally good at elevating comments supportive of our constituency's preferred varieties of groupthink, but which may handle less-popular viewpoints less well (even when expressed cogently, politely, and coherently, such views face a toss-up between up- and down-moderation), and which also allows well-written posts that don't appear within an hour or two of the story to disappear from the radar of most readers.

And this isn't exactly a new concept for newspapers. Are there any serious newspapers with appreciable circulation numbers that allow anonymous letters to the editor in their print editions?

See also: The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, Penny Arcade [penny-arcade.com]. Maybe this is the right solution to the GIFT problem for this particular institution. I look forward to seeing if this is effective in improving signal-to-noise.

What with the recent spate of popular reading devices, (iPad and the followers soon to come), not having keyboards in the first place, one almost gets the impression that these papers want people to shut up and listen. And then shut up some more.

So there's three levels at work here. On the top level we have the primary motivation for this. ..

"Hey, if we publicize contentious issues which are designed to engage people on an emotional level, then we can expect to see a fuck-ton of cash come our way as peop

It cannot be denied that the discourse will certainly be more civil with real names. I suspect the fee is not a money-raiser; it's so it can be checked that the name is real, by virtue of it matching a valid credit card.

Where does that leave people that would rather remain anonymous so they can express unpopular views? In a hard place. OTOH, it is quite routine that Letters to the Editor are written with real names.

...you have a point. I mean, our paper has always been very strict about verifying the identity of writers of letters to the editor. So what's the difference?
Google. No employer is going to sift through thousands of newspapers to see if you wrote any LTE's they don't approve of. But googling? Oh heck yes, in a heartbeat.

I still agree with the newspapers on this, but it sucks that some people will be--justifiably--afraid to speak up.

Presumably, everyone who can qualify via cc is an adult, so will there be any moderation for language or general douchebaggery? After all, if you pay to be there, shouldn't you be able to say whatever you want?

I'm sure some people would love to have a forum where they don't have to watch their language and can speak as strongly as they wish, knowing that only people committed enough to pay money are able to involve themselves in the conversation.

First, newspapers suffered from "incessant trolling and anonymous slander" always. They dealt with it by limiting the number of pages given over to 'letters to the editor'. "incessant trolling and anonymous slander" BY the editors was considered expempt. of course.

Second, North Attleboro (and Mass by extension) is pretty much ALL "incessant trolling and anonymous slander". What the hell are they gonna put up on the blog now? Movie reviews and cat stories? Welcome to the Massachusetts experience. We don't call them 'Massholes' in Maine for no reason.

ps - You can't slander a Massachusetts politician. The truth is an absolute defense.

I'd never pay any platform simply to allow me to comment. If money is to change hands, I'm the one who should be paid since I'm increasing the value of their product with my carefully considered opinions.
I wouldn't comment under my real name either - the legal arena for false accusations of libel, false accusations of terrorism etc is already heavily biased towards the state/the combatant with the most money so I am in no hurry to provide information that would make it easier to connect me to my comments.

But he has a point. Part of me would like to see ACs banned on Slashdot. But then I think that sometimes people could want to post something without it being tied to their name. Maybe because of work.What I would like see is for you to be required to have an account on Slashdot and have the option to post as an AC but still have it count on your Karma.It would probably reduce the really bad posts by %5 at max.

But I have got to be honest. Have any of you ever read the comments on most newspaper sites? How a

Right on, but Slashdot perfected the mod system ten years before these craptacular news sites did (I'm looking at you HuffPost -- uggggghhh). As far as I'm concerned it has been effective and got rid of the GNAAs (which are about the worst trolls on the web I've ever encountered). Every other sensible site should follow/.'s model. I'm not just being a brown-noser. CmdrTaco et al. did something very innovative here as far as I know. If they were Amazon, they would have had a patent and made MILLIONS!!;)

Right on, but Slashdot perfected the mod system ten years before these craptacular news sites did (I'm looking at you HuffPost -- uggggghhh). As far as I'm concerned it has been effective and got rid of the GNAAs...

Sure, but the everybody-can-be-a-cop method of moderation means that what's visible on this site is dependent on public opinion. It also creates a race to see who can be the first to post the chair-throwing, overlords, I-want-a-phone-thats-just-a-phone, walled-garden, xhcd-cartoon, privacy, etc comments. The noise level hasn't gone down, it has just had its energy directed into people mugging for that +3 Insightful tag to appear next to their post.

I can understand an occasional AC post. When you know the group-think is going to smack you down as a troll and you think it's right and you want your opinion at least heard. Also, as you said when it's work related it's nice to be Anon.
People should have the opportunity to be anonymous I think, you/we just don't have to value it as much as people that back their POVs with their names (or pseudonyms).
That's the genuis I believe in/.'s system. Posters with names automatically are modded up a bit, while Anons still have a tenuous chance at being modded Insightful.
No other boards that I'm aware of with mods have that, and I greatly value it... Certainly, with semi-professional mods that simply smack people down that disagree with them. That's why again, the meta-mod system on/. is a great equilibrator...
Just my 2c

Whether or not it's a "great idea" it's the newspaper's right as a private business to require whatever they want for someone to post comments on the site. It might not be the best way to encourage comments, but if you look at the comment section of the Washington Post or other newspaper, there is so much spam and garbage that there ought to be a requirement of real name.

Also, a one-time membership fee of 99 cents does not seem unreasonable for a city's daily newspaper. Or maybe just allow subscribers to comment.

Actually I think rather than discouraging comments it will simply move more single sided bias to the entire story. A news paper attracts a certain readership with certain views that align with the typical views of the writers. Essentially an army of uninformed yesmen who have made the critical mistake of thinking they can get a completely unbiased view from any one newspaper rather than reading several. Your typical comments on news sites with absolutely no moderation will tend to agree with the author. You

Agreed, and although it probably isn't much of a problem for such a small newspaper/site it's also a great way to discourage spammers. There are a lot of forums online where i wouldn't mind paying a one time 99 cent fee to sign up if it meant that the continuously regenerated spammer accounts would go away. (I'd rather pass on the "real name required" bit though =)

In the case of newspaper article comments I'm not sure a real name is a bad idea.

I've seen (and left) a few in a local paper that were terribly insensitive--not always wrong, exactly, but when your grandma drives into a car and everyone is killed--the local paper, read by the family, might not be the best place to debate the merits of/problems associated with DWO.

I've seen articles about parental negligence, a 20 year old drowning because he didn't wear his life jacket, etc. with some very insensitive finger pointing.

I'm not saying the debate is wrong, but when you lose your kid to some thing like this, you don't need to read about how stupid he was not wearing a life vest--it needs to be debated but not right there (Plus, trust me, all those who knew the kid will be wearing life vests in the future).

So having a real name associated won't (and shouldn't) stop people from posting their opinions, but it might help them remember that they are communicating with real human beings with feelings and not throwing a comment into some abstract internet debate.

FWIW: The US Postal Service requires both a credit card and a valid email to do an online change of address, or set up a temporary forward of mail. They also require that either the old or new address match the card billing address.

I doubt he's talking about comments from the Secretary-General of the UN or the head of the IMF. It would probably be of concern to local officials, though. You know, the ones that would most likely be reading the paper and commenting on its articles. 100% of that town's population has heard of that paper.

Like many people on Slashdot, I have a day job where I'm known to a number of our customers. Sometimes I want to pass out some information that favours one of them but not another (e.g. product comparisons.) The wonder of Google means that I can't even do that on the website of our small-town paper using my real name.